where the two cultures meet

Value

Art and science attract very different financial value, if the sums being achieved at auction sales are anything to go by. Recently, Pablo Picasso’s Women of Algiers was sold for $179,000,000. At a forthcoming auction of Fine Books and Manuscripts at Bonham’s, a preprint of Watson and Crick’s 25th April 1953 article in Nature, Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids is estimated to be worth £3,000 to £5,000. Estimates of the value of other items in this sale are: Carl Linnaeus 1737 Hortus Cliffortianus £1,500 – £2,000 Isaac Newton 1687 Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica £60,000 – £80,000 Charles Dickens Great Expectations £1,000 – £1,500